UPS (NYSE: UPS) today announced enhancements to its global ocean and air
freight forwarding product, UPS Supplier Management, with the
introduction of UPS Order WatchSM, a cloud-based technology
platform that allows customers to more efficiently collaborate with
international suppliers and better manage their inbound supply chains.

Enhancements to the service include added capabilities to enable greater
accuracy and timeliness of overseas vendor bookings; improved processing
and management of suppliers; automated exception management; near
real-time shipment status and detailed line-level visibility of
in-transit inventory; improved internal operational processes; and
facilitation of purchase order (PO) consolidation and optimized shipping
plans. The enhancements, along with highly-refined logistics processes
stemming from decades of experience, are now available to current
customers. The UPS Order Watch platform will be available to new
customers starting in early 2013.

“Companies are beginning to look to the cloud for opportunities to
improve supply chain collaboration and reduce operational
inefficiencies,” said Tom Boike, vice president of supplier management
at UPS. “Through scalable cloud-based supply chain management
technologies such as UPS Order Watch, companies are not only able to
streamline management of vendors, but also manage all of their inbound
shipments via a single platform. This can provide opportunities to
consolidate ocean freight shipments and improve container usage to
realize cost savings, which is increasingly important as COOs are
looking for ways to mitigate ocean transportation costs following the
ocean carrier rate increases in 2012.”

The improved UPS Order Watch vendor booking system will dispatch
system-generated exception alerts to help ensure vendor adherence to
customer requirements and provide an online system for approvals,
facilitating PO-specific communication between vendor and customer. The
improvements to the Supplier Management service will eliminate
time-consuming email communication and also reduce the need for
additional record keeping by the customer.

Enhanced monitoring of vendor bookings against purchase order details
and ship windows can further increase customer control, enabling
intervention in early or late shipments or improper order quantities.
Once an order is placed, PO-level shipment planning and execution
capabilities enable visibility and control from order creation through
shipment delivery, providing customers with a virtual on-hand inventory
view of incoming orders and merchandise.

UPS Order Watch also facilitates improvements to inbound supply chain
visibility by enabling a “single version of the truth” due to the entire
value chain community, from ocean carriers to trucking companies, being
linked to the host network as opposed to the common method in place
today of electronic data interchange, or EDI, file exchanges.

UPS (NYSE:UPS) is a global leader in logistics, offering a broad range
of solutions including the transportation of packages and freight; the
facilitation of international trade, and the deployment of advanced
technology to more efficiently manage the world of business.
Headquartered in Atlanta, UPS serves more than 220 countries and
territories worldwide. The company can be found on the Web at UPS.com
and its corporate blog can be found at blog.ups.com. To get UPS news
direct, visit pressroom.ups.com/RSS.

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